Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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George Howarth
Main Page: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)Department Debates - View all George Howarth's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Bellingham
I want to praise my hon. Friend for his indefatigable support for the overseas territories. As he knows, we will shortly publish a White Paper which will discuss how we can reinvigorate our relationship with them, and obviously we want them to participate fully in Her Majesty’s jubilee celebrations.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations can play an important role in encouraging the Burmese to maintain the progress that he described earlier?
Mr Hague
Yes. That is particularly true given that Burma will have the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014. One of the points that we made to other ASEAN nations at the United Nations General Assembly last year, before Burma’s appointment, was that the country must be pushed in the right direction—the direction in which it is now moving—if it expected to have the chairmanship, and those nations seem to be working well together.